Faulkner today?

I'd like to continue this conversation a little.  I think that there are a lot of things left to say about Faulkner.  Specifically, I'm still very interested in the time period.  I'm no longer pursuing the Ph.D. in English as a Faulkner scholar - I think that was a mistake, even though I had some interest.  There are a lot of reasons for this, none of which are very interesting.  I think, though, that Faulkner can be extremely useful in a lot of different ways, not the least of which is as a writer of complex short texts.  I teach middle school, and Faulkner would be a challenge for most of my middle school students.  But that doesn't mean that they couldn't or wouldn't understand him, given the right approach.  I think that sharing Faulkner with my students would also be a nice way to introduce them to something that I pursued prior to becoming a teacher - a kind of sharing of stories.

I think, off the top of my head, that chapters from As I Lay Dying might work on their own.  Or separate, short chapters juxtaposed.  I like the contrast, for example, between Cash and Dewey Dell.  I think there's a lot that a middle school kid could get from that.

There are a lot of short stories, and some of them are downright incendiary.  Sometimes there's language that needs to be dealt with, but I think there are enough stories that this could be a valuable pursuit.